My Sweetie recently attended a conference in Baltimore, so I tagged along. I spent most of a Monday wandering around the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum.
It had been close to thirty years since my last visit, which was before I focused my modeling and research on the mid-1920s. I had forgotten how many locomotives, rolling stock, and artifacts were on display that are from the earlier years of rail history. The B&O is the main focus, of course, but it was the first operating railroad in the US. Wandering around the historic collection was amazing.
Workhorse power from long, long ago sat under the enclosed historic roundhouse.
The early locomotive colors illustrated the starkly different prototype appearance in the early 19th century.
Striping and letter shading was front and center on several locomotives. Click on any image here to see a larger version so you can soak in the details. The Museum website has a section with profiles on many of the exhibits.
This display caught my eye as it would have been a common scene on a team track or station where goods were unloaded from a box car into a wagon for local delivery.
These displays of barrels, boxes, and crates reminded me of the material size for many loads.
A typical four-wheel caboose was on display. This one started life on the Buffalo & Susquehanna Railroad, which was absorbed by the B&O in 1932. While these shorter cabooses were outlawed in several states, many were used on B&O branch line and terminal operations from the Teens into the Forties.
You can get pretty close to these exhibits. This is one of many caboose detail photos I snapped. While this former B&S caboose is slightly different from the B&O designs of that era, I couldn’t pass up the moment to click away. I’m going to need a half dozen similar cabooses for my next layout project.
I don’t think the North Car Shop was open during my last visit. It’s full of more locomotives in a great setting.
A great surprise inside the North Car Shop was this Chesapeake & Ohio 4-6-0. This 1902 Baldwin-built loco has many features typical of older locos working in the Twenties. So of course, I snapped many detail photos. Here’s more on C&O 377.
The piston cylinders and running gear are details I need to understand and install on several HO scale steam locos.
I captured a few images of the reversing linkage components between the frame and boiler.
I had a great day soaking in the atmosphere and exhibits at the B&O Railroad Museum. I hope to return again with an appointment to visit the research library and discover more.
I should mention there are many exhibits to explore outside of the museum. Several tracks are filled with locos, freight cars, and passenger cars from the late steam and early diesel era. A Pere Marquette automobile box car caught my eye. I had built a couple HO scale Speedwitch Media kits of this prototype. I didn’t know I’d run into a real one near the museum parking lot.
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Those colorful early ones have long been my favorites. On account of commercial product availability when I got serious about doing model trains in 1980s, other eras are what I used, but my heart has always been with the early rail era.
Great stuff Eric, thanks for sharing
Fenton
Eric:
Many thanks for sharing this visit. I’ve never been there and most likely won’t, so greatly enjoyed this virtual visit.
Chuck
My computer group once held a conference in Baltimore, and the banquet was at the B&O museum. My office mate (O scaler), another guy who was a railroad enthusiast, and I walked around enthralled. (The food was good and the band was surprisingly good, too. Even for the non train-buffs, that ranked as one of the best events we had.)
That would have been so cool! – Eric H.
On my bucket list too, Eric. Most excellent
Rich
We had a similar experience at the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum as part of our trip with the grandkids. It is very nicely done with lots of good stuff indoors. Barb and I plan to hit Steamtown later this weekend.
Neat, Steve! The PA Railroad Museum is next on my list. It’s about an hour from the house. I also need to check their library finding aids to see if I need research time. – Eric H.
August weekends is Model Railroad Days at the PA Railroad Museum.
Capitol Free-mo is scheduled for Aug 23-25.
Good luck with Steamtown a/k/a the Scranton Scrapyard, Steve. The lack of continuity there since John Latcher was Sopt. and then moved to the Gettysburg Battlefield park was unfortunate. He provided good long range planning for both which has not always been followed as it shoulld have been. Steamtown has particularly suffered with new Supers being rotated in and out of there too often. Three or four years ago no steam was available and nnothing was running. When questioned by areporter about that the woman Sopt. was quoted as saying something to the effect that she didn’t want to run trains because trains were dangerous. Since Chris Ahrens retired there has been little positive work completed on anything having much to do with steam. Truly and unfortunate state of affairs. Don Valentine
After seeing the photograph of you, I have to say, I always thought you were taller…
HA!! – Eric H.
It is a wonderful place glad you visited it.
Eric –
Thanks for a great overview of this museum. We are attending a friend’s 75th birthday party there on Saturday.
Paul R Greenwald
NMRA #129229
PRRT&HS #1802
Eric,
Long time since i commented. MY RRis finally underway again. too old to travel.
question – why were short cabooses outlawed by some states?
I hadn’t known that since narrow gauge seemed have a lot of them.
Ted Wiese
I enjoy your blog – not my particular interest, but always something interesting. I need t get to Baltimore sometime.
by the way, Ohio has a couple of private colleges on the edge. Baldwin Wallace in Berea is one, and I hear Hiram is another. Notre Dame college in Cleveland closed last year.